From Swami Kriyananda - Continued...
(J. Donald Walters)
November 1992
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Are we on different paths?
I had a long talk a few years ago with the bishop of Assisi, in Italy. An article had appeared in the local papers condemning Master's teachings, among others, as "synchretist." (Webster's defines synchretist as, "the reconciliation or union of conflicting (as religious) beliefs or an effort intending such.") I decided to try to explain to the bishop that Paramhansa Yogananda in his teachings never tried to sew together a patchwork quilt of disparate concepts. What he did, rather, was show that the fundamental truths taught in the different religions, and particularly in the Hindu and Christian religions, are one and the same.
Well, the bishop was of course more concerned over the possibility of any threat to the faith of his parishioners than he was interested in my arguments. His mind, on the issues presented to him, had been made up years earlier. I doubt that he'd have been open to my arguments even had he been a simple professor of theology with no diocese to guide. A dedicated churchman is more concerned with church policy than with the truth. For the churchman, indeed, church policy is the truth.
To demonstrate the Church's broad-mindedness, the bishop eulogized Buddha, whom he described (as Catholic priests have been schooled to do) as a "wise philosopher, a great man, whose intellect took 'natural religion' to the greatest heights possible for the human mind." The bishop made it clear, however, that Buddha was only a human being, and incapable of speaking from divine revelation as Jesus did.
During our conversation I told him, "But I, who was raised a Christian, don't in any way feel that I have left my religion in the process of embracing a unitive view. These teachings have actually made me a better Christian."
To this he replied, "You're not a Christian."
I: "I certainly am!"
He: "No, you're not."
I: "My dear sir, it is for me to say whether I am a Christian or not."
He: "No, it isn't. To be a Christian, you must fulfill three basic conditions: One, you must go regularly to confession; two, you must partake of the Eucharist; three, you must accept Jesus Christ as Savior and as the only Son of God."
I: "As for the first two, do you imply that the early Christians were not Christian, either? Neither the confessional nor the Eucharist was included in their practices. And what about the Protestants, most of whom reject the confessional, and many of whom also reject the Eucharist? Are you saying that they, too, are not Christians?"
He: (evidently not willing to be too openly offensive to the Protestant sects) "Well, leaving aside those first two conditions, the fundamental and absolute requirement for every Christian is that he accept Jesus Christ as Savior and as the only Son of God."
At this point it became necessary for me to explain Master's teaching that the Infinite Christ, not Jesus Christ the man, is the Savior. It was necessary also to touch at least lightly on Master's explanation of the Biblical expression, "the only Son of God."
By this time I knew, of course, that the most I could hope to accomplish from our conversation would be to leave the bishop with an impression that we, the followers of these teachings, are at least good people, sincere (if deluded) in our beliefs, and moderately sane. I think I accomplished this end. At any rate, when, some time later, our center in Assisi applied for permission to make use of some of the local Catholic churches for performances of my oratorio, "Christ Lives," the permission was granted. It was obvious, however, from everything the bishop said, that Catholic Church dogma has been woven too tightly to permit entry to Master's refined explanations of fundamental Christian teachings.
What the bishop said in reply to my short and, I must admit, not very hopeful explanation of the Christ Consciousness was, "Well, that is, quite simply, heresy!"
My point here is not to discuss these general issues of dogma, but to point out that the bishop believed he had a right to tell me whether I am a Christian or not. I'm sure you all feel, as I do, that no one has a right to tell me, or you, any such thing. To us, Master brought back the teachings of original Christianity. A true Christian, he said, is one who follows the deeper teachings of Jesus. Mere belief does not define a Christian. Referring to the distinction Master drew between faith and belief, we might say that mere belief does not define a person's faith. As Master's disciples, we were taught to live the teachings of Jesus in such a way as to experience their truth ever more deeply. Experience is the definition of faith. One may believe in God, and still have faith only in what he actually knows: his worldly life.
Not Yogananda's disciples?
Well, now, isn't what you've done to me and Ananda quite similar to what that bishop did? You've told others, and have tried to convince us, that we are not even on Master's path. You've actually denied Kriya Yoga initiation to some of our members with this incredible explanation.
In a recent letter to a friend of ours, you described me as "using" Master's teachings. Well, what other teachings would I use? What other teachings would any true disciple use? Master's teachings are our teachings. Only out of meanness of spirit could anyone suggest otherwise.
Perhaps the word use implies, in your minds, some sort of villainous presumption on the part of an ambitious outsider. In fact, in your legal papers you've dared to call me an "interloper." Well, surely it isn't necessary for me to remind you that I am Master's direct disciple, no less so than you. He said to me, on the occasion of our first meeting, "I give you my unconditional love." I would be dishonoring my role of discipleship to him if I did anything but "use" his teachings!
In your well-known "Warning" against other teachers, you describe those who give Master's teachings outside of SRF as "using" Master's name "to gain recognition" for themselves. I can imagine the bishop of Assisi saying the same thing about Master—namely, that Master "used" the name of Jesus to gain acceptance for himself in Christian countries.
Bigotry and narrowness are not Yogananda's spirit
Well, we believe, because Master told us so, that it was Jesus himself who asked Babaji to send Master to the West in order to bring back the higher teachings of Christianity. And we know that the bishop of Assisi represents a dogmatic religion. Frankly, what I find difficult to accept is your taking as dogmatic a line as his in claiming that I'm following another path from yours, let alone in describing as an "interloper" one of your own fellow disciples, initiated by Master, made a minister by Master, told to teach Kriya by Master, and self-declaredly still Master's disciple. Surely the guru we follow was too universal both in his human sympathies and in cosmic consciousness for such lack of charity, to say nothing of bigotry, ever to enter any of our minds.
And yet, I know that your discipleship, too, is sincere. For that matter, the bishop of Assisi's discipleship is, in its way, sincere also. Indeed, he ended our conversation on a more charitable note, stating, "The important thing is that those of us who believe in God not fight one another. Our common task is to combat atheism. That is our real enemy, and the common enemy of mankind today."
Even in that bastion of conservatism, you see, the winds of a new consciousness are stirring a few eddies of air.
Form vs. principle
Some of the advantages and disadvantages of institutional religion were summarized in my conversation with the bishop of Assisi. What is evident, on the positive side, is that institutional dogma preserves a united front in the face of outer challenges. Evident also is its capacity for preserving certain truths that might well have become forgotten, had religion been left to the discretion of merely anyone and everyone.
As I came away from the bishop's palace, however, I could feel the almost hypnotic power in the thought-form that pervades the entire Catholic Church: "There are a billion of us in the world who think this way. Who are you to think differently?" On the negative side, the unity preserved by institutional religion can very easily become a commonality in error.
Still more on the negative side, when power is emphasized rather than charity, as it has been through most of the long history of Roman Catholicism, the deeper purpose of religion is forgotten. Any thought-form that challenges the individual's need, and right, to think for himself is pernicious.
In fairness to you, I must affirm that I know you do subscribe to Master's oft-reiterated statement that SRF is not a sect. You write from your hearts when you state, as you did recently in a letter to another individual, "We sincerely believe in and strive to live by the ideals of harmony and divine love that [Paramahansa Yogananda] expressed in his teachings and his life."
The karmic result of SRF's organizational beliefs
At the same time, you find yourselves on the horns of a dilemma. For you also believe that only Self-Realization Fellowship should be allowed to spread Yogananda's teachings. That is to say, you believe you have a duty to prevent any other person or organization from teaching them. This ideological stance forces you to embrace certain repressive attitudes, and imposes on you certain modes of behavior that are in direct conflict with what you "sincerely believe" were Master's "ideals of harmony and divine love."
How will you resolve this dilemma? Evidently you imagine that, if you can deal your present opponents (as you perceive us to be) a quick and decisive blow by getting the law to declare itself on your side, no one else will dare to flout that precedent in future, and you'll be free to present the smiling face of divine love to everyone else. The immediate, and of course regrettable, controversy will have been swept under the carpet, and you will be in the happy position of being able to treat it as though it had never occurred.
There are several serious defects to any such assumption.
First, as a matter of simple psychology, a person's present acts and decisions determine to a great extent his future behavior. Uncharitable deeds leave lingering scars not only on the lives of the people one hurts, but on one's own consciousness as well.
Second, the way we confront our tests in life does more to reveal, and also to reinforce, our own deep-seated attitudes and beliefs than our most carefully thought-out statements of policy.
Third, victory through the exercise of power, in preference to winning by love, even if victory through power is sought in one instance only, establishes in the mind the thought of power as a quick and easy solution to any new problem that presents itself.
In the present instance, the power sought has been power through the process of law. In future centuries, as SRF becomes institutionally entrenched, who knows: military power? pogroms? mob incitement? mass persecutions? These have all happened before—not in the Catholic Church only, but in religion generally. Why should they not happen again?
What a vast tragedy, however, if the seeds of such conflict were to have been planted by the direct disciples of Master, from whom this religion of divine love derived!
Inevitably, your present legal action, in the unlikely event that it should prevail, would have a far-reaching influence on SRF's future behavior towards anyone with whom it disagreed, or of whose actions it disapproved.
For the above reasons, among others perhaps, our lawyer has characterized your lawsuit as, in his opinion, "the most important religious freedom case of the century."
Fourth, therefore, were you to succeed in getting the law on your side, and thereby in establishing a legal precedent through this case, it would amount to a serious blow to religious freedom in America. The Constitution in this country is set up to protect this essential liberty.
The fact that this last aspect of the case obviously never occurred to you, fundamental and self-evident though it certainly is, suggests that you have not considered other important and far-reaching implications in your decision to sue us.
Lawsuits—or "Only love can take my place"?
Leaving aside, for the time being, the question of whether Master really wanted only one organization to represent his teachings, let us address a related question: Even supposing he had wanted SRF to be his only teaching vehicle, would he therefore have wanted SRF to enforce this policy—even to the extent of instituting lawsuits for the purpose of such enforcement? Let me put it another way: Would he have wanted SRF to move so very far away from his dictum, "Only love can take my place"?
Would he have wanted you to set out to bankrupt, destroy, or otherwise quash the devotional activities of any person or group of people who, out of love for him, "dared" to work outside the bounds of SRF? You simply cannot believe that he did. Nothing he ever said, and no example that he ever gave throughout his life, supports your placing such a mean construction on his words.
I believe that, in your devotion to him and to his work, you have become so much attached to its outer form that you've lost sight of certain basic, universal, and timeless principles. Indeed, your very beliefs are contradicted by your actions. You cannot possibly continue in this contradiction. For your charitable beliefs must inevitably shift until they align themselves with your uncharitable deeds.
Institutional pride
In Fresno, when we met there two years ago, I quoted Master's statement, "Self-realization will become the universal religion of the world." "Obviously," I continued, "Master didn't mean that Self-Realization Fellowship Church, Inc., would become the new, universal super-church, to which all mankind must eventually become converted—in this total dominance out-Catholicizing even the Roman Catholic Church. Master can only have meant that all religions will, in time, come to recognize that their own teachings rest on the timeless principle of Self-realization."
Daya Mata, you stunned me with your reply: "That's—your opinion." What, pray tell, is your opinion? Could you possibly believe that SRF, the institution, will be the future religion of the world?
Again, I mentioned that you had told me Master wanted us to unite the various Kriya Yoga lines that trace back to Lahiri Mahasaya. I expressed my conviction that Master could not possibly have meant for us to try to unite all those groups under the banner of Self-Realization Fellowship/Yogoda Satsanga Society of India. In other words, I concluded, what he wanted us to do, self-evidently so, was try to inspire the different groups to recognize one another in a spirit of love and brotherhood; to work together whenever possible; and when not possible, at least to give one another tacit support. It would have been utterly unrealistic for Master to expect more than this. No one, certainly, with any awareness at all of the realities involved could have expected the members of all—or, indeed, of any—of those groups to become card-carrying members of SRF/YSS.
Again, Daya Mata, you amazed me with your reply: "That's—your opinion." As if my opinion were not worthy of even the dignity of a reasoned reply. Again, therefore, I ask: What is your opinion?
Perhaps you felt that yours is no mere opinion, but infallible knowledge, to which I must adjust my thinking on pain of being judged to be out of tune with Master. Well, if this was your meaning, I have an answer to it: Master was idealistic, yes, but he was also realistic. (I well remember him scolding me once, "You must be practical in your idealism!") He knew, far better than any of us Americans did, the natural distaste that Indians feel for religious organizationalism. He himself shared some of this disinclination, as he often made clear to us. He cannot have failed to be familiar also with that curious trait of the Indian character: its penchant for disorganization. Most importantly, he knew, as he made quite clear in Autobiography of a Yogi, that Lahiri Mahasaya himself never wanted an organization to be founded in his name.
For all of the above reasons, it would have been impossible for Master to expect the different lines of disciples deriving from Lahiri Mahasaya to place themselves voluntarily under the aegis of any organization, let alone the American-based one, Self-Realization Fellowship/Yogoda Satsanga Society of India. Given the realities we ourselves encountered in India, it would have already been asking a lot for those groups to support one another in a spirit of mutual friendship and respect. Frankly, after having lived in India several years myself, I am perfectly certain that Master could have held no such idea as you implied by rejecting my assessment of the situation as merely an "opinion," and, if I understood you correctly, a wrong one at that.
Well, but let us suppose that you really do believe (though, frankly, I find it difficult to accept that you do) that Self-Realization Fellowship is destined some day to become the super-church of the whole world. Let us, then, examine the pros and cons of institutional religion, and see how well these fit the realities of Master's mission, of the new age we've entered, and of humanity as we know it to be. You might counter that humanity will change. Well, I wouldn't bet on it. I might add, though, that the more it does change—for the better, at any rate—the less need it will have for religious institutions of any kind.
Religion as an institution
Probably the best-organized religion in the world is the Roman Catholic Church. It isn't surprising that you have patterned yourselves after that Church, since you seem so thoroughly bent on institutionalizing your own organization.
A certain SRF center leader, visiting Mt. Washington several years ago, exclaimed to one of the monks, "Mt. Washington is becoming just like the Catholic Church, with the SRF President as the Pope." This remark was not intended, believe me, as a compliment. The monk, however, took it as such. "Oh, you're so right," he exclaimed fervently. "That's exactly what it is!"
The Roman Empire was a product of Kali Yuga—the Dark Age according to Hindu tradition. Mankind as a whole was less capable than it is today of grasping subtle spiritual truths, except as those truths were taught in the form of parables, clothed in elaborate rules and rituals, and encased in rigid, dogmatic formulae. The absolutes of Roman Law were a necessity in those times: They helped to hold Western civilization together in the face of widespread social disintegration.
The Roman Catholic Church drew many of its basic premises from certain general assumptions of that time. Even in monasteries, the Rule became the guarantor of spirituality. (I am reminded here of Master's words to me when he placed me in charge of the monks: "Don't make too many rules. They destroy the spirit.")
The Catholic Church is superbly organized. It presents, as I said earlier, a united front in the face of heresies and other doctrinal challenges. It does its best to preserve the purity of Christ's teachings, and has, I think, done a better job of it than the Protestant churches, with their claim that it suffices merely to read the Bible to understand it. The Catholic Church insists, and not without reason, on its own primacy as the defender of the Christian religion.
Master stated, however, that he had been sent to teach the original teachings of Jesus Christ. This implies, obviously, that those original teachings have become diluted. It is clear also that Master was sent from Hindu India, rather than born into the Church as a reforming Christian saint, because such reform from within would have been impossible, given the realities of the present Church with its rigid institutionalism.
Saints: the true custodians of religion
Padre Pio, a modern Christian saint, and well known, certainly, to you, gave confession many years ago to an SRF member in Italy, a friend of mine. This friend related the story to me.
"During my confession, I told Padre Pio that I practiced Kriya Yoga.
"'Oh, hush!' Padre Pio replied. 'You shouldn't talk about such things. But,' he added with a conspiratorial smile, 'you're doing the right thing!'"
Saints themselves, you see, are powerless to change the teachings of their own church, heavily institutionalized as it is. They must go along with its policies if they are to do whatever good they can in the world.
Master, in the process of reviving the higher teachings of Jesus, shattered to powder the very cornerstone of Roman Catholic theology—perhaps without even realizing, in his reasoning mind, that he was doing so. The bombshell he dropped demolished the basic premise upon which St. Thomas Aquinas, centuries ago, claimed the unique authority of the Roman Catholic Church to represent the teachings of Jesus. St. Thomas's conclusions have been given paramount importance by the Church. Indeed, they established the direction that all Catholic theology has taken since his time.
Jesus himself, St. Thomas proclaimed, gave his stamp of eternal authority to the Roman Catholic Church when he declared to Peter: "Thou art Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."
Master's explanation of this passage was devastatingly different from that of Aquinas. Jesus, he said, was commending Peter's intuitive insight for having recognized, within the Master's human form, the eternal, living Christ. On the bedrock of that insight, Jesus promised him, he would be able to construct his "church" of cosmic consciousness, which would be Peter's eternally, in God.
According to Paramhansa Yogananda, Jesus wasn't referring to the future Catholic Church at all, any more than he'd been referring to the temple in Jerusalem when he declared earlier, "Destroy this temple, and I will raise it up again in three days." (This, as the Bible itself explains, was a reference to his physical body.)
It is probable that the Christian teachings would have become diluted anyway with the passing of so many centuries. The fact, therefore, that Paramhansa Yogananda was sent by God to bring back "the original teachings of Jesus" does not in itself signify that the Catholic Church has betrayed its perceived mission to preserve the purity of Christ's teachings. The Church has done what it could. It has been hampered, however, quite as much as helped by its dedication to acting as the sole and uniquely authorized institution for preserving that purity.
For what can a religious institution, complete with real estate holdings, political power, social prominence, and an enormous army of prelates do to preserve spiritual truths, except—well, institutionalize them? display its theological concepts in neat, orderly rows, like glass cases in a museum of archaeology?
For contrast, look at religion in India. There, in keeping with the Indian preference for what we in the West would call disorganization, religion is not really organized at all—not, at any rate, as we understand the concept. Yet the original teachings of the Vedas—thousands of years older than the New Testament, and indeterminately older than the Old Testament—are still offered in a relatively pristine form. It is true that Master came also, as he told us, to bring back the original yoga teachings of Krishna. The basic truths expounded in the Vedanta, however, are widely known in India, and are as purely and sublimely expressed today as they ever were.
The difference is that, in India, the purity of the teachings has been preserved from age to age not by some smoothly run institution, but by living saints. There is no official hierarchy in the Hindu religion; no one to enforce dogmas on the great masses of worshipers. The Hindu religion is based on realized truths. It is understood, and universally accepted, that Self-realization is the common destiny of all mankind, and that this destiny, once achieved, bestows on the awakened saint the right to declare the Eternal Truth himself, ever afresh, with no less certainty in this, our own skeptical, scientific age than in any other.
Master made it clear in his teachings that the saints are the true custodians of religion. In fact, of the many times I heard him tell stories from the lives of Christian saints, I never once heard him praise them for having been "true sons [or daughters] of the Church." He spoke, rather, of their inner relation to Christ and God, and ignored completely their relation to the Church—except perhaps when making passing references to its persecution of them.
Now, how can you claim that Master wanted his teachings placed in the straitjacket of organized, hierarchical institutionalism? It is enough that he created an organization for their promulgation, an organization in which, he said, he wanted everything to be kept simple.
SRF—A punitive body
In recent years especially, you've tried to make a shrine out of his organization. And now you have actually taken the step of trying to make it a punitive body, like the Catholic Church during the medieval ages, arrogating to yourselves the duty of preventing anyone outside the SRF organization from ever speaking in Yogananda's name. Apart from the fact that I'm personally certain he never meant for you to do anything remotely like this, and that I never heard him so much as hint at such behavior, reason itself militates forcefully against any possibility of such an interpretation. Even were you to reply that he said it to you, if not to me, I would feel constrained to reply to you as you did to me in Fresno, "That's—your opinion." For it happens constantly in life that we hear what we want, or are prepared, to hear.
Now, please wait before you try to turn that statement against me, as it would be perfectly easy to do if you wanted merely to be clever. Let us proceed a little further into the history of the Catholic Church, and see what happens when a religion becomes over- institutionalized.
Meanwhile, let us bear in mind that, in the prayer to the Gurus that Master taught us to repeat daily, we pray also to the "saints of all religions."
Institutionalism feeds on itself
I ask you to look ahead to the future. For it is towards future generations, even those centuries from now, that we must direct our present thinking.
Like attracts like. People with institutional natures attract others with similar natures. People who join highly formalized institutions are, more often than not, people who are comfortable with formal structures, who feel secure when hemmed in by unbending systems of rules, and who, perhaps, actually believe that the larger and more imposing a cathedral, the more important it has to be in the eyes of God.
These are all things that Master explicitly eschewed. He told me, "Too many rules destroy the spirit." Again, he told us, "I love Lady Simplicity." And I recall him remarking on more than one occasion, "We don't want to be organized like [that is, with the smooth but cold efficiency of] General Motors."
Consider the matter in a practical light: The larger the institution, the greater its need for good accountants, good clerks, good administrators—for good bureaucrats, in short. If it is a religious institution, the hope may be that all its servitors will be saints. Suppose, however, that enough saints can't be found to fill all those positions: What then?
If there should happen to be two candidates for a post, the first one competent but by no stretch of the imagination saintly, and the second one saintly, but, even though divinely willing, incompetent, who would be selected? Would anybody select the saintly soul, if what was needed was simply someone to balance the books? And would anyone opt for the saint with no gift for administration, when what was needed was someone with administrative skills?
No doubt it does happen sometimes that a saintly devotee is also a good accountant or administrator. He will certainly be the exception, however. The chances are overwhelming that most of those running the organization will owe their positions not to their spiritual qualifications, but to their mundane efficiency.
Like, again, attracts like. Mundane administrators, once ensconced in positions of responsibility, are naturally more inclined to favor others with similar dispositions. Thus, even if there happens to be a saintly soul in a group of candidates for an accountant, it is altogether likely that he'll be passed over in favor of someone less saintly, not necessarily more efficient than he, but with a more businesslike approach to life—someone, in short, not likely to worry his superiors lest he be found someday writing hymns in the margin of his ledger book.
And if, among candidates for an administrative post, there happens to be a deeply spiritual person with a talent for management, his candidacy may nonetheless be filed away "for future reference" should there happen to be another candidate, no more suitable for the job, but more inclined to enjoy swapping worldly anecdotes with his not-so-saintly superior.
Many a superior, certainly, especially in religious institutions, will not want to have someone under him whose very presence serves as a constant reproach to his own lack of spirituality.
Thus, the church cannot but become, in time, top-heavy with bureaucrats. Indeed, the Catholic Church completed this evolutional process long ago. It hasn't changed since, except in the direction of an ever-denser forest of bureaucracy. And this, I remind you, is the Church that was created ostensibly to preserve the purity of the teachings of Jesus Christ, including the subtlest and most esoteric of them.
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